The Couture Road Show

To revive sales, fashion houses court new wealth in Asia and the Middle East

By

Christina Passariello and

Stacy Meichtry

Updated July 7, 2007 12:01 a.m. ET

PARIS -- Dior's haute couture show here on Monday was a twilight extravaganza with supermodels Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista walking amid statues at Versailles, a live orchestra playing in the background. The opulent castle on the outskirts of Paris was an apt backdrop for one of the world's foremost purveyors of high-end dressmaking, a trade of hand-sewn dresses and suits invented here centuries ago.

John Galliano's Fall 2007 Haute Couture collection for Christian Dior also doubled as a celebration of the fashion house's 60th anniversary. AP

Yet the market for haute couture is becoming less French every day. For decades, couture clients used to buy their $30,000 haute-couture suits and $100,000 gowns directly at fashion houses in Paris. Now, faced with a dwindling client list at home, the route has reversed: Globetrotting directors of couture ateliers are seeking out new customers. The outreach aims to court newly rich clients in the U.S. and in emerging markets like the Middle East, Russia and Asia. These markets are helping drive couture's recovery.

At Dior, for instance, executives say they expect to sell many of the 45 embroidered gowns at Monday night's show not in Paris, but at a showroom on Fifth Avenue in New York City. They have already posted a video of the collection on their Web site to attract a wider audience.

Valentino officials say they regularly fly to Moscow and Dubai to meet clients, since only 10% of clients still buy the label's signature couture gowns through its Paris showroom.

Haute couture is the term given to hand-made pieces that are tailored to individual customers and, quite often, push the envelope of clothing design. Although couture sales form a relatively small percentage of a brand's business, it can help sell cheaper products, such as sunglasses and perfumes, by enhancing the aura of exclusivity around a brand.

On the Catwalk

Last year, Chanel staged a couture show in Hong Kong to woo Asian buyers. This year, Virginie Laubie, the head of Chanel's couture department, says she's taking the gowns designed by Karl Lagerfeld to New York in mid-September to meet American clients, followed by two more trips to the city before the end of the season -- compared with one trip to New York every six months a few years ago.

Straying the farthest from the stuffy Parisian fitting rooms where extravagant gowns are presented, Italian designer Giorgio Armani last January streamed his couture collection on the Internet.

Yet while they may have changed the way it's sold, the new global customers of haute couture are expected to fuel a revival of the trade over the next few years. "We're in a very strong cycle, and we're benefiting from economic growth," says Dior Chief Executive Sidney Toledano.

He says many of the fashion house's new couture buyers are couples in their 30s who made their fortunes in technology and real estate. Mr. Toledano says sales of Dior's haute couture collection, presented in January, doubled compared with the same period last year. Stripping out the high cost of the fashion shows and product research, Mr. Toledano says the business is profitable.

Just a few years ago, haute couture seemed like a dying craft. Unprofitable couture houses including Yves Saint Laurent, Thierry Mugler, and Emmanuel Ungaro dropped off the couture fashion week calendar, and the week of runway shows was shortened to three days in 2005. This year, the schedule has increased to four days.

The roster of fashion houses belonging to the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, the group that organizes couture fashion week, has dropped to 10 this year from 24 labels 20 years ago.

Executives say women who are accustomed to the ready-to-wear market, where clothes are available immediately, were no longer willing to wait months for their clothes. Specialist ateliers that applied feathers and beads to clothes shut down as business dried up. "Once upon a time there were many more couture houses, and women would come to see ten or 15 at a time," says Ms. Laubie.

Now, shoppers' values are starting to shift again, with some wealthy women putting a premium on owning a one-of-a-kind frock. "Couture isn't dead," says Antoinette Seilli&egrave;re, a baroness who was snapping pictures of her favorite dresses at French designer Franck Sorbier's show in Paris this week. "It's like painters in France: They're still there, just not as central as in the past."

Despite the huge cultural shift in the way couture is presented, many of the industry's traditions haven't changed. Atelier directors say, for example, that multiple fittings remain essential, and the process still takes weeks. Giorgio Armani, one of the few fashion houses that only recently started couture, is one of the quickest to turn around an order: four weeks for a suit. At Dior, once an order has been taken, dressmakers build a dummy, based on the client's measurements at the first fitting. It is kept in storage for future orders.

Both Dior and Chanel say they have some clients who still prefer to view designs privately, far from the photographers and traffic jams that turned this week's shows into a huge publicity event. "We invite all of our clients," says Chanel's Ms. Laubie. "But some never want to be seen at this kind of event."

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